ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1077 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1077 ************************************ From: "Brian M. Scott" 12 Jul 1998 Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel! You were interested in a German feminine name from the late 12th century, preferably starting with or, as second choices, or . You also wanted it to be easy to remember and to sound pretty. Finally, you wanted a byname that sounded like and were more interested in a southern than a northern name. THE GIVEN (BAPTISMAL) NAME - C(H)UNEGUND Our sources for the 12th century are pretty skimpy, but one name stands out: in one form or another was one of the most popular medieval German feminine names. [1] This was due in large part to the popularity of St. Cunegund (c.978-1033); wife and empress to Emperor Heinrich II, she was canonized by Innocent III in 1200. [2] (Oddly enough, it appears that through November, 1997, only one person had registered any version of the name in the SCA.) Our earliest documentary examples of the name are mostly from French sources: [3] 842 9th or 10th c. 908-15, c.1028 no date, but no later than the 12th c. Three of these citations can be placed on the border between France and Germany. In the north the earlier instance of is from Lie\ge, just 25 mi. WSW of Aachen. (The backslash represents an accent grave over the preceding vowel.) Further south, is from Remiremont, on the Moselle about 60 mi. due west of Freiburg; and is from Klingenmuenster, Germany, 7 mi. north of the French border and about 20 mi. WNW of Karlsruhe. We also have early instances of the name from the records of the Abbey of Arnsburg in the Wetterau, just north and east of Frankfurt am Main. [4] As it is the third most common feminine name in the period 1200-1250, with 4 occurrences out of 45 total; only , with 5, and , with 6, were more popular. And from the area around Basel in Switzerland we have: [5] 1252 1253 13th c. 13th c. 13th c. 1292, 1294 1262 [probably a pet form of the name] (Here represents a with a small vertical line directly over it, an early form of umlaut.) It's clear from these data that the name was in use in southwestern Germany well before 1200, and at least in the Arnsburg data it is consistently popular through the 14th century. [4] The question is what written form(s) would be most likely for southern Germany c.1200. In this connection it's necessary to distinguish written forms, which may exhibit various degrees of Latinization, from spoken forms. is a 'plain-vanilla' Latinization (as a 3rd declension feminine noun) with no noticeable dialect characteristics. In the Upper German dialects spoken in the area that we've been considering, initial \k\ became \kx\ in Old High German. (Here \x\ is the sound of in Scottish and German , so that \kx\ might informally be represented as \kkh\.) This sound was usually written , and it appears that this sound change was very frequently indicated even in the Latinized forms, as may be seen from the foregoing citations. In a Latin document, therefore, you could write the name either or , though the latter seems to be more common. Removing the inflectional ending <-is> leaves us with , essentially the native German form of the name. The final was, then as now, pronounced \t\ and could also be written . (We don't have such a citation from exactly your period for this particular name, but there are many for other names with final , e.g., 1196 and 1185. [5]) Both and would therefore be reasonable German spellings. The pronunciation is \kxun-e-gunt\, where \u\ is the vowel of and , and \e\ is that of ; the primary stress is on the first syllable, and there is secondary stress on the last. OTHER GIVEN NAMES There are of course other names from that period that meet your objective requirements. In the Arnsburg data from the first half of the 13th century there are two instances of and one of . [4] The available Swiss data are richer. [5] They include many examples of and from the 10th - 13th centuries; four 12th century instances of and from the 13th century even more of ; four examples of from the 12th and 13th centuries; and 1093 and 12th c. All of these names are of Latin origin, but all would be suitable for southwestern Germany c.1200. THE BYNAME This brings us to the byname. I use the term 'byname' rather than 'surname' for a descriptive second name because in the late 12th century hereditary surnames had only just begun to appear in Southern Germany and along the Rhine. [6] Even bynames were by no means universal. Koeln (Cologne), the most important city on the Rhine, was in the forefront of naming fashion, yet only 18% of the persons named in its records from 1150 had bynames. [7] A century later, however, the percentage had risen to 70-90%, and we might guess that in the late 12th century it was perhaps between a third and a half. The fashion was slow to spread to smaller communities, but there is a reasonable chance that someone living in a city in southwestern Germany or along the Rhine would have had a byname in the late 12th century. The modern Upper German (and hence southern) surname derives from a Middle High German (MHG) or 'apple-tree'. [1, 8, 9] This in turn goes back to Old High German (OHG) 'apple-tree', the source of the place-name 1171; the place, now called , is some 50 mi. east of Nuernberg. [10] The OHG 'apple' more usually occurs as , , and , as in the MHG forms. [11] (In OHG the spellings and denoted the same sound, namely, \pf\ as in modern German . [12]) Thus, even though 1412 is the earliest surname citation that we can find, the byname could clearly have been used c.1200. [1, 9] , , and are all possible forms, but the first has the virtue of being most likely to elicit what was probably the usual pronunciation, \ap-f@l-ter\ (informally \AHP-f@l-tair\). Here \a\ is the vowel of German , \@\ denotes the schwa sound of in ; the primary stress is on the first syllable, and there was probably secondary stress on the last syllable. In your period locative bynames (i.e., those specifying place of origin or residence) were almost always accompanied by a preposition. [7] Since the usual language of record was Latin, this preposition was usually , and in fact we have and in a document of 1044. Even in the 11th century some documents were written in German, however; in one of these, from Augsburg c.1070, we find both German and Latin , e.g., and . [5] In the late 12th century we might reasonably expect to find , , , , or , of which the last two represent the spoken form; in writing and could be substituted for in any of these. I hope that this information is helpful and that you won't hesitate to write again if you have further questions. For the Academy, Talan Gwynek =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D References: [1] Bahlow, Hans. Deutsches Namenlexikon (Baden-Baden: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, 1985), s.nn. Kunigunde, Affolter. [2] Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) s.n. Cunegund. [3] Morlet, Marie-The/re\se. Les Noms de Personne sur le Territoire de l'Ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe Si=E8cle, Vol. I (Paris: E/ditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1968), p. 152. [4] Mulch, Roland. Arnsburger Personennamen: Untersuchungen zum Namenmaterial aus Arnsburger Urkunden vom 13. - 16. Jahrhundert. Quellen und Forschungen zur Hessischen Geschichte 29 (Darmstadt: Hessischen Historischen Kommission Darmstadt und der Historischen Kommission f=FCr Hessen, 1974), p. 37 ff. [5] Socin, Adolf. Mittelhochdeutsches Namenbuch nach Oberrheinischen Quellen des Zwoelften und Dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1966), pp. 58; 258; 88; 233-4, 246. [6] Tengvik, Goesta. Old English Bynames (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri-A.-B., 1938), p. 12, n. 3. [7] Schwarz, Ernst. Deutsche Namenforschung. I: Ruf- und Familiennamen (Goettingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1949), pp. 66; 101. [8] Brechenmacher, Josef Karlmann. Etymologisches Woerterbuch der Deutschen Familiennamen (Limburg a. d. Lahn: C. A. Starke-Verlag, 1957-60), s.n. Abfalter(er). [9] Schwarz, Ernst. Sudetendeutsche Familiennamen aus vorhussitischer Zeit (Koeln: Boehlau Verlag, 1957), s.n. Apfolter. [10] Schwarz, Ernst. Deutsche Namenforschung. II: Orts- und Flurnamen (Goettingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1950), p. 15. [11] The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), s.n. Apple. [12] Robinson, Orrin W. Old English and Its Closest Relatives (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), Ch. 9.